Comments on: A Brief Rant About Student Debthttp://www.harpyness.com/2010/11/23/a-brief-rant-about-student-debt/
As narrated by the most charming and vicious women on the internetFri, 16 Jan 2015 17:30:59 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.8.5By: The most wonderful time of the year « GenerationDebthttp://www.harpyness.com/2010/11/23/a-brief-rant-about-student-debt/comment-page-1/#comment-46701
Mon, 20 Dec 2010 01:14:45 +0000http://www.harpyness.com/?p=17806#comment-46701[...] blogs have seen fit to post about student debt woes lately, including The Pursuit of Harpyness, The Frisky, Above The Law, and The [...]
]]>By: Sarahttp://www.harpyness.com/2010/11/23/a-brief-rant-about-student-debt/comment-page-1/#comment-38167
Tue, 30 Nov 2010 17:36:01 +0000http://www.harpyness.com/?p=17806#comment-38167I agree with the post. Let me just add my voice to the chorus pointing out that state school tuition is also too high.
]]>By: Verity Khathttp://www.harpyness.com/2010/11/23/a-brief-rant-about-student-debt/comment-page-1/#comment-37959
Fri, 26 Nov 2010 20:48:58 +0000http://www.harpyness.com/?p=17806#comment-37959…the point to that long-winded waffle was A) education leading to better employment is a lie if the opportunities aren’t there, and B) a lot of people who got their degrees when a semester was $400 sneer at us like it’s our fault we’re in debt.

For geographic placement, I live in the southern US of A and have only attended public schools.

My parents impressed on me at a young age that education was the most important thing in the world. (As others have said in this thread, material things can be repossessed, but knowledge can’t.) They also impressed on me that the only way to get stay out of Minimum Wage Land and into the Hallowed Land of Salaried-with-Benefits was to go to college. (They thought it was true,too, the poor dears.) So I worked my ass off from kindergarten on. ADHD threw a few behavioral hurdles into the mix, but I managed to become a top student. (A super-geeky little thing too, but that’s a story for another time. ^_^)

At age 15 I discovered that the occupation I’d been working towards since childhood, astronaut, might be an impossible goal. I was much too short for space service, calculus was kicking my ass (the first struggle I’d ever had with math), and as a military brat I was wary of entering the service in the hopes of getting that 1-in-1000 recommendation to NASA.

So I looked around at my options. I loved children, but education was already getting mangled by the government. I loved anatomy and debate, but thought I would never survive/be able to pay for med school or law school. I have no idea why, as a voracious reader, library science never crossed my mind. Which brought me to my serious passion, but a long sell to society: Art.

“I’m good at drawing and telling stories,” I thought. “I’ll become an animator!”

And, you know what? It was a good thought. My storyboards were legible, my flip books worked, and I got decent at the new-fangled 3-D animation at a summer camp. The only problem was that the only in-state schools that offered animation as a major at the time were private schools. Super expensive private art schools that seemed to be full of kids and professors that took themselves WAAAAAAAY too seriously. The closest public university that offered it was in Florida. Much to my mother’s dismay, I applied there too.

UCF offered me an academic scholarship. None of the private schools did. So it was actually cheaper for me to go out-of-state, plus I was way happier with the variety of people.

I wouldn’t change that decision for the anything. For one thing, if I hadn’t gone, I would have missed out on a set of close-knit life-long friendships and discovering a riveting hobby. And I honestly chose the best I could at the time with my current knowledge of myself and the world.

But in the 4.5 years I was in college, everything changed. The animation industry shifted, Disney closed down the Orlando studio, our department couldn’t keep a professor for more than a semester, and I learned that I loved pre-vis and animating but DESPISED every part of the process that came between (which is a very bizarre and hard-to-market skill set).

So I graduated without securing an animation job, but I wasn’t too worried. I went back to waitressing, and struggled with the “all entry level positions require experience” insanity. I finally got my foot in the door at an arts education facility. It was a great fit and they promised me full time when someone left. And a few years later someone did leave, and I eagerly took over their duties.

Before my title change became official the economy tanked.

I spent the next two years doing a stressful full-time job for part-time pay before I wised-up and told them where they could put those extra duties.

So I continue to whittle away at my $30,000 in debt on $8.50 an hour supplemented by freelance illustration and under-the-table temp jobs.

All the decisions I were logical at the time. I just didn’t have a crystal ball.

And there are hundreds of thousands of young Americans just like me.

]]>By: Endorahttp://www.harpyness.com/2010/11/23/a-brief-rant-about-student-debt/comment-page-1/#comment-37942
Fri, 26 Nov 2010 09:23:41 +0000http://www.harpyness.com/?p=17806#comment-37942Ahimsa, it was me who made that statement. What I meant wasn’t that undergrad degrees aren’t useful – I think they teach you all kinds of skills that can be useful in many fields. I just meant that in most cases they aren’t directly vocational. A lot of people who study things like chemistry or computer science will work in fields vaguely related to their subject, but won’t necessarily be using the knowledge from their degrees directly. Examples from my own circle of acquaintances: a chiropodist who became a sales rep for a pharma company; a nurse who did the same; an economist who became an insurance man; a pre-med student who started working in health advocacy…and so on. Sure, they’ll be drawing on things they learned at undergrad, but really, the pre-med student isn’t going to need much knowledge of organic chemistry to do her job, is she? And of course in the liberal arts the situation is more extreme – how many philosophy students become jobbing philosophers?
]]>By: ahimsahttp://www.harpyness.com/2010/11/23/a-brief-rant-about-student-debt/comment-page-1/#comment-37938
Fri, 26 Nov 2010 05:59:38 +0000http://www.harpyness.com/?p=17806#comment-37938I don’t think that one field of study is automatically more worthy of feminist discussion.

Neither do I! I was not trying to say that any one field was superior to another. But saying that undergraduate degrees are “not useful” excludes such a huge range of careers (not only those that require “only” an undergrad degree but also those that don’t require college at all) that it was quite a surprise. It seemed to me to be a rather unusual assumption so that’s why I made my comment.

I’m all in favor of education. And I’d be happy to pay more taxes for higher education so that students would need to pay less (or even not at all if that were possible). But that doesn’t mean that the majority of folks can, or even should, get multiple college degrees. It all depends on the person, the circumstances, the job path, and so on.

I guess the statement was supposed to be about only those folks in liberal arts? I didn’t get that from the context (probably my fault – skimming when I should read more carefully).

It’s true that the writers at this blog mostly come from liberal arts/social science backgrounds, which is why when we’re talking about first-hand experience, we probably sound like we default to discussing those fields.

]]>By: BeckySharperhttp://www.harpyness.com/2010/11/23/a-brief-rant-about-student-debt/comment-page-1/#comment-37928
Thu, 25 Nov 2010 22:40:05 +0000http://www.harpyness.com/?p=17806#comment-37928@Ahimsa: There’s nothing wrong with talking about liberal arts degrees but it’s a bit surprising for a feminist blog to spend so little time talking about college degrees in engineering, science, business, and so on.

I’m not quite sure what you mean by being “surprising”. Is there a memo mandating that feminist blogs should write more about college degrees in the sciences than the liberal arts? I don’t think that one field of study is automatically more worthy of feminist discussion. It’s true that the writers at this blog mostly come from liberal arts/social science backgrounds, which is why when we’re talking about first-hand experience, we probably sound like we default to discussing those fields.

Do you personally just wish we posted more about education/careers in the sciences/tech/finance? We’d definitely welcome a guest post if you’d like to share your experiences in the tech world.

]]>By: ahimsahttp://www.harpyness.com/2010/11/23/a-brief-rant-about-student-debt/comment-page-1/#comment-37917
Thu, 25 Nov 2010 21:13:16 +0000http://www.harpyness.com/?p=17806#comment-37917But most people don’t end up really using their undergrad degrees professionally ….

Actually, a whole lot of people get undergraduate degrees that are quite useful professionally. And they don’t even have to be degrees from a “top-tier” school.

My BS in Computer Science (1982) was from a state school well known for its engineering department. I never did any post graduate work. I got a job at a high tech firm when I graduated in spite of the recession (yes, I know that I was lucky–hard work alone does not bring success).

There’s nothing wrong with talking about liberal arts degrees but it’s a bit surprising for a feminist blog to spend so little time talking about college degrees in engineering, science, business, and so on.

Back to the topic of student loans, I believe that all college costs (at least in the USA) have increased a lot faster than inflation. So, yes, it is harder to finance an education now than it was when I went to school. So I do feel terrible for students who are going to school now and would like for more options to be available for education funding. I don’t know the economics behind the issues so it’s way beyond me to suggest any systemic changes.

However, there should still be some common sense involved in education funding on the part of the individual. In some folks there seems to be a very elite mind set that education is for its own sake and not for gaining a marketable skill. If you’re rich (or have rich parents, or spouse, or partner) then fine–choose any field of study you like because someone else will be footing the bill. But those who come from poor or working class backgrounds absolutely ask ourselves, “How am I going to make a living?” when choosing a degree. I paid for school myself (working, loans, scholarships) so I was a lot more pragmatic than those who had college paid for by their parents.

Back when I went to school I seem to remember reading a guideline that the total loan amount for your degree should be no more than your estimated yearly salary would be after graduation (and less than that would be even better). Maybe one solution is some more basic education in finance at the high school level? And maybe more/better career counseling?

]]>By: Mackeyhttp://www.harpyness.com/2010/11/23/a-brief-rant-about-student-debt/comment-page-1/#comment-37895
Thu, 25 Nov 2010 09:25:44 +0000http://www.harpyness.com/?p=17806#comment-37895@Endora – apologies for the mistake! And I agree that we seem to share similar views about higher education.
]]>By: Alectohttp://www.harpyness.com/2010/11/23/a-brief-rant-about-student-debt/comment-page-1/#comment-37894
Thu, 25 Nov 2010 09:08:06 +0000http://www.harpyness.com/?p=17806#comment-37894I have to admit, stories from the US always horrify me. Right now I’m doing a MA in Taipei, and it’s going to cost me about 6000 euros for the two years, unless I fuck up and fail classes or don’t get my thesis in on time.

I have a French Bachelor’s. Back home, a year in university cost 300 euros; and this included social security because my parents are middle-class and still married and working so I wasn’t eligible for any grants.
But people are weeded out in the first year (my major went from 750 to 250 students between first and second year; we’re always warned that about 60% of students are going to fail their first year), a lot of the schools are in a bit of a sorry state, we did end up with a massively overeducated population – hence the move to Asia, the great majority of my classmates are no longer in France – and we’re competing against the elite school kids, who since France is a very elitist country get the preference over uni kids although we have as good an education as theirs. So a lot of us get the hell out until we’re way better at what we do than any elite school student. It’s the only way we have.
Someone also mentioned how in France universities left you to fend for yourself – HELL YES. On the other hand, it taught us how to deal with things, because if you didn’t find shit out by yourself, you drowned.
The Taiwanese system follows the American one very closely, and I resent being babied so much, as do my French uni mates here as well, but everyone else seems to find it fairly normal.

Sorry for the long comment, I guess it doesn’t bring that much to the table. I feel sorry for that girl though; I wouldn’t know where to start in her case.